James G. March conceived organizational learning as a balance between the exploration of new alternatives and the exploitation of existing competencies in an organization. This study extends earlier work by employing a computational simulation to evaluate the effect of additional tiers in a hierarchical organization; specifically regarding March's original constructs of exploration, exploitation, personnel turnover, and environmental turbulence. Next, the study evaluates the effects of homogenous and heterogeneous social networks within two independent multi-tier hierarchical organizations. This study reaches four major findings. (1) Increasing exploitation has negative consequences for multi-tier organizations, but not for flat organizations. (2) Homogenous social networks help an organization stabilize itself when confronted with environmental turbulence. (3) If overused, a strategy of social networks can preclude the benefits offered by increased positive effects of exploitation and personnel turnover. (4) As an organization increases its number of tiers, the cumulative effect of heterogeneous social networks is more beneficial statistically. Cumulative findings have strategic relevance for organizational theory and future empirical studies.